


i love you means home

by xx_bittersweet_merlin



Series: founders era [10]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, M/M, Nymphs & Dryads, Sirens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 06:52:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14764716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xx_bittersweet_merlin/pseuds/xx_bittersweet_merlin
Summary: (done for a greek monster au: siren and hamadryad. oneshot, but may have a few snippets added in the future)Madara, a siren, spends his days wandering the skies and occasionally dropping in near his favorite forest to see if the hamadryad who lives there appreciates his gifts. Of course, he's too much of a disaster to actually speak to him, but he ends up being lured in anyway.





	i love you means home

Madara hoped he wasn’t being too obvious. He was sure he’d hidden well enough, well enough that anyone standing in the trees probably couldn’t see him, and the boulders on the cliff provided a large amount of cover. He was sure he wouldn’t be spotted. Hopefully.

Ocean water lapped at his ankles and the smell of saltwater filled his nostrils as he crouched there, staring at the tree line a short two hundred feet from the beach, waiting anxiously. The sun was high in the sky already and yet he still hadn’t seen the tree spirit come out. He was usually up and about early, going about his day, relaxing in the sun-

Maybe he’d taken offense to the gift Madara had left? He wasn’t sure what daffodils meant in flower language, but they were bright and warm and very pretty and made him feel a bit happier to look at, just like the tree nymph, and he’d thought they might look handsome in the spirit’s long hair.

Gods, what if they meant something sinister to tree nymphs that Madara didn’t know about? Had he sent a death threat? A message that he thought the nymph was the ugliest thing he’d ever seen? That he hated him? He’d been too rash, he probably should have asked Mito first, the harpy always knew what was appropriate in these situations-

He startled, withdrawing the talon he’d been chewing on from his mouth, when a rustling noise caught his attention, and perked up when he saw a figure stepping out from the shadowed forest. There was something cradled in one of his hands, and he was smiling- it sent a tingle through Madara’s body just to look at- as he turned to look at the shore.

Madara hissed and threw himself down, swearing internally. _Idiot!_ Of course the spirit would come out to look around for who’d left the flowers. And, well, Madara had been hoping he would come out- that’s what he was there for- but he didn’t want to be found. Dammit.

Still cursing himself, he quickly scurried across the line of boulders behind him, round to the other side of the cliff where he could take off into the sky without the nymph seeing, unaware the tips of his wings had been entirely visible the whole time.

* * *

 

Madara didn’t have one set piece of territory he made a point to return to. Mito kept telling him he ought to just make a nest on her mountain, but he felt awkward intruding on her area when she’d just tied the knot.

He spent most of his time wandering around, napping on boulders in the ocean- though there was one place he wouldn’t mind calling home. The gigantic, sweeping forest he frequented to visit the tree nymph was always warm and amicable-looking, but he was banished to seeing it from afar at the shore due to his unrelenting stupidity.

“Maybe he didn’t see me,” he muttered to himself as he landed on one of the rocks on the cliff-face. He hopped down to a lower one, grabbing onto a vine on the wall to steady his jump, and made his way to his usual boulder he hid on.

If the nymph had seen him, he reasoned with himself, he’d probably just seen a brief flash of movement anyway. Surely he didn’t know what he looked like.

His brother’s jeering voice ran through his head. Madara had always been the fearless one, ready to throw himself headlong into whatever danger looked enticing, but, apparently, when it came to handsome spirits who lived in the trees all his confidence was simply _gone_. What if he tried to talk to the spirit and said something inane? He would make a fool of himself and he’d never be able to fly back to the region at all.

_What’s the matter, Madara? Scared?_

He scowled to himself as he settled on the rock. He wasn’t scared; he was simply being strategic.

(Of course, strategy implied there would, at some point, be a victory, and hiding in the rocks didn’t give much opportunity for that.)

He looked up when he heard voices drifting to the shore- _human_ voices. It immediately set him on guard; humans almost never strayed into the wilds where spirits lived, and when they did they were never respectful.

He peeked over the edge of his rock, eyes narrow, and watched a duo of human men emerge from the trees. It took a bit of focusing to remember what the tongue they were speaking was, but he managed to glint the gist of their conversation. _Wood_ , they wanted. _Material_. Something to make _money_ with.

He scowled and sank back down. Any one of those trees could have been the tree spirit’s- damaging trees was strictly forbidden, and judging by the lackadaisical way one of them snorted about getting cursed for doing it, they knew it too.

He glanced at them again and let a smirk crawl onto his face. How unfortunate he’d been around to hear.

For them.

He didn’t like to use his water form- not like his brother, who spent ninety-nine percent of his time in it. His mother’s side of the family were raptors and his father’s were sea-dwellers, and he’d always preferred things that reminded him of his mother over his father. It was, however, useful for situations that his talons and feathers might look too alarming.

Shifting as he dove into the water, he let his smirk widen into a sadistic grin as he opened his mouth and began to use his voice. It floated up and out of the water, sounding echoed due to its weight, a smooth, lilting tone that sounded like nothing human.

The voices went quiet. He knew, without having to look, that they were wandering towards the shore in a daze, attracted by his song.

He let himself float upwards and broke the surface of the water, drifting to the edge of the rocks and slowly placing his hands on the precipice. He closed his mouth and pulled himself up onto his elbows, the air still ringing with the echo of his voice, putting on a sultry smile as the two men blinked at him.

“What’re you looking for, gentlemen?” he purred, letting his voice dip into an alluring range. Now that he was even closer he could smell something putrid on them; no actual odor, but a sense of ill-doing that told him they definitively deserved to get dragged to the bottom of the ocean.

“Uh…” One of them blinked at him, still dazed, floundering at him like a beached fish. “T…trees…and minerals…”

“Oh?” He unfolded his arms and pressed his palms against the rock, easily raising himself up to lean on the edge, letting them see his torso and the shining scales that began mottled across his navel. His smile widened. “Why don’t you come search in here?”

“Y…yeah.” They began to nod to themselves, as if it was the best idea they’d heard in years, stumbling towards him across the rocky part of the shore with hardly a care in the world. “In there.”

Madara’s smile took on a murderous glint. As soon as they were close enough, he struck out with smooth hands that turned to webbed claws, yanking them both into the water in one go with an inhuman strength. It startled them out of their complacency and they each barely got the beginnings of a scream out before he dragged them under, coiling around them with a tail made of razor-sharp fins and scales, and he smiled with teeth made like knives as he dragged them towards the depths and colored the ocean crimson.

* * *

 

He stared at the pool of blood he could see in the seawater from his tree branch, a little flustered, waiting for the bodies to surface before realizing they weren’t going to. He’d never seen a siren before- nor one in action- and it was as unsettling and eerie as he’d been told it was. All that siren had done was smile, and he’d felt like stumbling over in a daze to beg for just the chance to lay a kiss across his knuckles.

And then he’d turned on a dime and transformed into some eldritch horror of the deep, and it had been thrilling to watch.

He was a little flattered that the siren- who he’d been trying to get to come past the shore for a week now- had taken care of the mortals for him. He’d sensed their malcontent from his home and come prepared to take care of them himself, but hadn’t had to. The whole thing was fairly frightening, logically, and he wished he could get closer and examine those sharp fins and razor teeth and gorgeous scales.

Maybe he should return the gift, he thought, glancing down at the daffodil in his palm. The siren circled the skies quite a bit and he’d started to suspect he had no nest anywhere. He clearly liked his neck of the woods, and the tree nymph himself, but he seemed too shy to come greet him.

A smile rose to his face. He knew exactly what to try.

* * *

 

So satisfied with himself, he was, that he thought nothing of it when he rose from the water and lifted himself onto a boulder to take a sun nap. After all of his hunts, he always took an hour or two to have a rest in the sun as a reward, and a way to dry himself off before changing back, and this one was no different.

He awoke, a few hours later, and drew in a long yawn as he arched his back to stretch. He was blearily opening his eyes when he noted the spot of white that hadn’t been there before.

Startled, he ripped himself up from the rock and skittered back, drawing his tail in and letting his legs shift out to take their place. A bundle of bird’s nest sat in front of him, bound with a length of green twine. The white flowers were bright in the sunlight beating down on the dim grey rocks that made up the shore.

_What the hell?_

They were too unnatural to have gotten there by drifting in the wind. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen someone there, other than the two humans, and it occurred to him, with no small amount of anxiousness, that someone must have left them for _him_.

Perhaps someone had decided to play a joke on him? He had pissed off too many other spirits to count, and he could think of more than one that might hate him. Maybe it would turn all his feathers a gaudy yellow if he touched it.

…it was still sitting there, rustling in the breeze.

Slowly, he leaned forward and reached over with one talon, giving it a quick poke and yanking his hand back. Nothing happened, fortunately, and a quick check of his hair proved his feathers were still the same color.

He frowned and retrieved it, drawing it into his lap. Bird’s nest, bishop’s lace, a flower that meant haven and sanctuary and home. Ironic, considering he had none, and no nest to go and put it in.

But who had left it there?

He sat there in befuddlement wondering what to do with it before deciding to store it in a niche in the cliff, sliding off the rock and going to find his tunic where he’d left it. It had been a long time since anyone other than Izuna or Mito had given him a gift. He supposed it wouldn’t hurt to braid a few of them into his hair; they _were_ attractive little things.

* * *

 

He was awoken by the quiet sound of beating drums in the distance, pulsing from the forest with a strange, alluring rhythm, calling to him across the shore as he sat propped up against a boulder with water lapping at his feet. He opened his eyes to the cold night air and blinked a few times, to make sure he was actually hearing it, but it was still there, steady and constant, making him shuffle to his feet to look around the edge of his rock.

In the distance, he could see soft lights glowing from within the trees. The music seemed to get louder when he noticed it, radiating rich tones and long notes that lingered in his ears.

Unbidden, he stepped down from his ledge and made his way to the bottom of the cliff, barely noting his bare feet coming into contact with the sand. He walked towards the forest he hadn’t dared to enter before, mind focused on getting to the source of the music, drawn in by the scent of what smelled like berries being cooked on the air.

He walked and walked, until the beach was far behind him.

He paused in the middle of a clearing bathed in warm light, illuminated by glowing energy running through the wood of its trees, feeling, for some reason, it was where he was supposed to stop. The music fell silent.

_What…?_

“Peaches are my favorite,” a voice said from beside him. “But I figured you might not have tried the berries from this forest before.”

Madara jumped and let out a scream that would have given the time he’d gotten speared in a wing a run for its money. He whirled around and leapt back simultaneously, taking everything in all at once, taking in the fact he was standing in an unfamiliar spot and he’d just _walked in_ without a conscious thought, what had he been _thinking_ , and now-

The hamadryad was- was right in front of him, and even more stunning up close. There were red markings on his face that circled bright yellow eyes that glowed in the dark and his skin looked as though it had a slight green undertone in the dim light.

He was also staring at him looking like he’d just kicked his puppy.

“I’m so sorry!” the nymph blurted out, staring at him with wide eyes. “I didn’t want to scare you!”

“Wh- wh-” Breathing heavily, Madara leaned back against the tree he’d stumbled into and twitched, trying to make sense of the nonsensical situation. “What are you doing?”

The nymph stared mournfully at him and then down at the bowl in his hands. “I was trying to offer you some berries.”

Madara looked down at the bowl. It was full to the brim with strange little red fruits, unlike any other he’d ever seen before.

“But I messed it up.” The spirit’s head crashed down as he slumped over, an aura of depression surrounding him. “I’m so sorry. Forgive me.”

“Uh…” His mind was starting to catch up, now, leaving him less panicky but no less nervous. It seemed he _had_ to talk to the pretty tree nymph now. “It’s, uh…it’s fine. I was just…startled. What was…what was that music?”

“Oh, the music?” the nymph brightened again, doing a complete one-eighty, and straightened with an easy smile to nod his head at a strange-looking plant to his right. On cue, it started vibrating and tapping part of itself that moved like a drum, producing the sound again. “I figured you might get curious and come in here if there was some music. Yours was so charming. And, well, the lace I left didn’t catch your attention.”

“Were you trying to make it so…” Madara trailed off as the nymph stared at him, face open and guileless, and he decided to drop it. “Never mind.” His mind caught up with the second part of his sentence a few moments later. “Wait, that was you?”

The nymph smiled sheepishly. “Yes, though I didn’t mean to scare you with that, either.”

They stood there, staring at each other, in awkward silence that left Madara shifting on his feet. Finally, the nymph held out his arms and shoved the bowl at him, bowing his head again. “Here! Take these, they’re a gift! You can come in the forest anytime.”

“Uh…thank…you.” Hesitantly, Madara reached out and took the bowl, giving the fruit a wary glance. He left an inquisitive pause at the end of his sentence.

“Hashirama! My name is, uh, it’s Hashirama.” The tree spirit stepped back, wringing his hands, staring at him as if waiting for something. “I’ve been hoping you would come visit for a while, but you never came past the shore.”

Madara’s face heated up. He took a berry to give his hands something to do, looking down to avoid his own embarrassment. “Uh…yes. I didn’t want to…intrude.”

“It’s not intruding at all! Hardly anyone ever comes in. A visitor would be nice,” Hashirama admitted, something very earnest on his face as Madara popped the berry into his mouth that made him shift on his feet away and look at the ground.

“It’s- very good,” he muttered, though he may have been biased; they tasted like wineberries, and those were his favorite. “I- I’m Madara.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Madara,” Hashirama replied, and others typically said that as a formality, but he sounded as though he meant it, and he was still staring at him, and his yellow eyes were looking into him in the dark. “You can stay the night if you’d like. I can’t imagine the cliff is very comfortable.”

Madara paused as he was chewing, staring at him in tentative consideration, and finally had to look away from the hopeful look in the spirit’s eyes. He hadn’t talked to anyone in a long time; he hadn’t had a friend other than Mito in a very long time.

“…yes,” he finally mumbled. “That would be…nice.”

He looked up at Hashirama, and the nymph smiled at him; for once, he felt himself starting to smile back.

* * *

 

Madara yawned as he glided through the clear skies, passing over the treetops and dropping the occasional flower petal from his hair that the wind dislodged, heading towards the tree that loomed over the rest of the forest a good distance from the shore. He’d asked Hashirama which tree was his, on his first night there, and he’d smiled and pointed at the largest one, an unnatural behemoth that was as big as a mountain.

“Oh,” he’d muttered, feeling suddenly intimidated. He’d figured the tree would be a bit…smaller. He’d never heard of a hamadryad having one that gigantic.

He angled up into the free spaces between the branches and flew in, past vines hanging down and bunches of leaves that concealed Hashirama’s home from view, dropping into the hollow part of the trunk. There were platforms that extended from several doorways, but he always liked to come in through the ceiling and surprise Hashirama.

“Ah, Madara!” he called, tone jovial, when he saw him descending. Madara waited until he was near the floor and retracted his wings, transitioning into a walk as Hashirama bustled over to him from one of the large wooden enclosures on the other side of the main room. He held something in his hands as he beamed, positively radiating the sun itself. “Look!”

He opened his palms. A glowing red flower was nestled within, looking as though it was a cross between a rose and a magnolia.

“I finally got it right,” Hashirama went on, gazing at him with a warmth in his eyes that felt like bishop’s lace.

Madara smiled. “It’s handsome,” he said, watching the little bits of light in the petals glitter.

Smile widening, Hashirama reached up and placed it in his hair with the rest of the flowers he’d grown. “Just like you.”

Madara’s cheekbones turned red. “Sap,” he muttered, turning away to walk over to the kitchen. He hadn’t understood why Hashirama liked human contraptions so much at first, but he had to admit the cabinets were convenient for storing things in.

He could feel Hashirama following him. He lingered a few feet behind him as he opened a cabinet and absentmindedly started looking over the various types of seeds within to snack on.

“By the way,” he said, as Madara’s eyes trailed over the sunflower seeds, voice tentative. “I wanted to, ah…talk to you.”

“About what?”

“Well…it’s been…a while since you came here,” Hashirama said, making Madara freeze.

A bit of anxiety flowed through him. He wondered if he’d outstayed his welcome- Hashirama had been kind enough to let him stay in his tree, but he could very well want time to himself. “It’s…it’s only been a few weeks,” he mumbled.

Hashirama’s voice took on a confused tone. “Madara, you’ve been here for a year.”

There was a clatter as Madara dropped his bag of seeds to the countertop, curling his hands around it and swallowing thickly. “Uh. Right.”

“I just- wanted to ask-”

Madara _really_ didn’t want to leave. If nothing else, however, he just couldn’t handle the awkwardness of Hashirama having to tell him, probably feeling bad about it. He spun around and spoke through a wince. “If you’d like me to leave-”

“What? No!” The loudness of Hashirama’s voice made him jump, and the spirit’s cheekbones began to darken to match his markings at his own outburst. Madara blinked at him, looking far too similar to the owls he kept in the aviary in the branches above. “I want you to _stay_. Forever.”

Madara’s brain ceased all function. He stared at Hashirama, mute, unable to think of anything other than how his pupils were disappearing and how it made his yellow eyes look a bit eerie. “W- what?”

Hashirama veered closer to him. The earnestness was back, with something like determination, and something else that was pleading. “Stay with me forever.”

Madara blinked again. He could tell he was shivering a little, but he hardly had the presence of mind to care, let alone stop it. Something wild and relieved and very, very hopeful took ahold of him. “You…you want me to stay?”

Hashirama stared at him for a long moment. He surged forward without warning and leaned down, pressing his lips against Madara’s with a burning intensity as his eyes went as round as dinner plates.

He let himself be drawn in by the waist, feeling something content and at ease and _happy_ roll through him, and wound his arms around his tree nymph as he let his eyes slide shut.

He pulled away and let out a panting breath, leaning his forehead against Madara’s, looking into his eyes when they opened again. Madara could feel it now. Something he’d been looking for, for a long time.

“I love you,” he murmured. Hashirama’s eyes lit up, as did his expression, as did his entire body as it thrummed with a pulse of energy that made his hair float briefly off his back.

He grinned, earnest, affectionate, and settled his hands on Madara’s hips. “I love you too.”

The next time Madara descended from the skies into their tree, Hashirama looked up at him, wearing a giant smile as he nursed a new flower in his hands, and called up before he’d even touched down. “Welcome home, love.”

Madara smiled, a crown of bishop’s lace in his hair, and went down to see what new flower would adorn his feathers today.


End file.
